To the European, a Yankee is an American.To an American, a Yankee is a New Englander.To a New Englander, a Yankee is a Vermonter.To a Vermonter, a Yankee is someone who eats apple pie for breakfast.And to a Vermonter who eats apple pie for breakfasta Yankee is someone who eats it with a knife.~An old Yankee joke

"What New England is, is a stateof mind, a place where dry humorand perpetual disappointmentblend to produce an ironicpessimism that folks from awayfind most perplexing." ~ Willem Lange

"To the rest of the country,New England has always stoodin much the same relation asEngland has to America -- that of spiritual homeland and mother country." ~B.A. Botkin, author of A Treasury of New England Folklore

"When people who have never lived in New Hampshire or Vermont visit here, they often say they feel like they've come home. Our urban center, commercial districts, small villages and industrial enterprises are set amid farmlands and forests. This is a landscape in which the natural and built environments are balanced on a human scale. This delicate balance is the nature of our "community character." It's important to strengthen our distinctive, traditional settlement patterns to counteract the commercial and residential sprawl that upsets this balance and destroys our economic and social stability."~ Richard J. Eward, Proud to Live Here.

New England Proverbs

"You can't keep trouble from coming, but you don't have to give it a chair to sit on."

"Small circumstances producegreat events"

"Wishing isn't doing."

"The world is your cow. But youhave to do the milking."

"It won't be warm till the snow getsoff the mountain, and the snowwon't get off the mountain till it gets warm."

"You can't always tell by the looks of a toad how far he can jump."

"Talk less and say more"

"He who feels the benefit should feel the burden."

"One today is worth two tomorrows."

"A good word now is worth ten on a headstone."

"A deaf husband and a blind wife are always a happy couple."

"The hardest work is to do nothing."

"Take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves."

"Money is flat and meant to be piled."

"Cut your sail according to your cloth."

"We have two seasons: winter and the Fourth of July."

"In New England we have nine months of winter and three months of darned poor sledding."

"Take off your flannels before the first of May, and you'll have a doctor's bill to pay."

"Thick and blue, tried and true. Thin or crispy, way too risky." (proverb about the safety of ice)

"An ounce of experience is worth a pound of theory."

"The quickest way to do many things is to do one thing at a time."

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Henry Ward BeecherClerical Orator(1813-1887)

"It is not the going out of port,but the coming in, that determinesthe success of the voyage."

"Every tomorrow has two handles:We can take hold the handleof anxiety or the handle of faith."

"Every man should be born againon the first day of January. Startwith a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past."

"Many of our troubles are God dragging us, and they would end if we would stand upon our feet and go whither He would have us go."

"The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't."

"The unthankful heart ... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!"

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Wilson "Snowflake" BentleyPhotographer, (1865-1931)

"...But always, from the very beginning, it wassnowflakes that fascinated me most. The farmfolks, up in this north country, dread the winter;but I was supremely happy, from the dayof the first snowfall-which usually came inNovember-until the last one, which sometimescame as late as May."

"Under the microscope, I found that snowflakeswere miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shamethat this beauty should not be seen andappreciated by others. Every crystal wasa masterpiece of design and no one design wasever repeated. When a snowflake melted, thatdesign was forever lost. Just that much beautywas gone, without leaving any record behind."

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Calvin Coolidge30th President of the United States, born in Plymouth, Vermont. (1872-1933)

"We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once."

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Ralph Waldo EmersonAuthor, Poet & Philosopher (1803-1882)

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go insteadwhere there is no path, and leave a trail."

"What I need most is somebody to make medo what I can."

"Most of the shadows of this life are caused bystanding on one's own sunshine."

""Though we travel the world over to findthe beautiful,we must carry it with us, or we findit not."

"This time, like all times, is a very good one if webut know what to do with it."

"Make the most of yourself, for that is all thereis of you."

"Life is a festival only to the wise."

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. "

"God hides things by putting them near us."

"We become what we think about all day long."

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Robert FrostPoet (1874-1963)

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing yourtemper or your self-confidence."

"What is required is sight andinsight -- then you mightadd one more: excite."

"Nature is always hinting at us"

"The best way outis always through."

"Don't ever take a fence downuntil you know why it was put up."

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Doris "Granny D" Haddock

"Small towns make up for their lack of people by having everyone be more interesting."

* * *Nathaniel HawthorneShort-story writer and novelist (1804-1864)

"New England is quite as large a lump of earth as my heart can really take in."

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Oliver Wendell HolmesPoet & Author (1809 - 1894)

"Where we stand is not as important as the direction in which we are moving."

"Knowledge and timber shouldn't be useduntil they are seasoned."

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James Russell Lowell, Poet (1819-1891)"All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action."

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Henry David Thoreau,Author, Poet & Philospher (1817-1862)

"It is not enough to be busy, so arethe ants. The question is, 'What arewe busy about?'"

"Beware of all enterprises thatrequire new clothes."

"We need the tonic of wildness,to wade sometimes in marsheswhere the bittern and themeadow-hen lurk, and hearthe booming of the snipe;to smell the whispering sedgewhere only the wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its livingand its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander..."

"It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things"

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Frances TrollopeNovelist (1780-1863)

"The Yankee: In acuteness and perseverance, he resembles the Scotch. In frugal neatness, he resembles the Dutch. But in truth, a Yankee is nothing else on earth but himself."